LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Chap.. Copyright No. 

ShelL-iV^S" 

- — • H 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



A BOY AND THE CHRIST 



BY 

FRANK C: HADDOCK 

W 



DRAWINGS BY 

MARY CONKEY HADDOCK 




of 



******* 



Coiyri 



W4S 



Copyright by 
EATON & MAINS, 
1896. 



Eaton & Mains Press, 
150 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



THE STORY IS DEDICATED 

TO MY WIFE. 



HAVE ACCOMPANIED HER IN FIELD AND LANE, BY WOOD 
AND STREAM, THE HUE AND SHADE AND THE RICH- 
NESS AND WITCHERY OF NATURE'S FACE 
HAVE COME TO A LARGER PLACE 
IN MY LIFE BOTH FOR 
PLEASURE AND 
FOR GOOD. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



It is the writer's custom to preach once 
year a Christmas Sermon in the form of 
story. This little book had thus its origi 
May it preach Jesus! 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. The Temple 9 

II. The Boy 12 

III. The Shadow 14 

IV. Questions . . . 22 

V. The Opening of a Soul 28 

VI. Interlude 33 

VII. The Man . . . fc e „ 37 

VIII. A System of Thought .,.;„-. 42 

IX. The Transition. . . 54 

X. The Yacht 55 

XI. The Black Woman's Testimony 58 

XII. The Last Picture 76 

XIII. "Deep as the Sleep of the Sea" 80 



A BOY AND THE CHRIST. 




i. 

1 : _ ; The Temple. 

In a dream, once, I beheld a distant Temple. 

This shining pile of ethereal architecture, 
massive in its proportions, correspondingly 
noble in its adornments, arose before me amid 
softly luminous clouds, of whose material, in- 
deed, it seemed constructed, and there fell 
upon it, with all its heavenly surroundings, an 
atmosphere of light that was like a diaphanous, 
translucent mist, faintly yellow. 



10 



A Boy and The Christ. 



While I gazed, wondering, the structure 
appeared to undergo ceaseless transformation. 
Its details, as of minaret and tower and dome, 
were never for long the same ; now coming 
into view, now fading from sight ; yet, withal, it 
self remained unchanged. Such is the manner 
of dreams. 

With a feeling akin to awe I approached its 
outer gates, and, entering, passed underneath 
a lofty pointed arch. Here I arrived immedi- 
ately at an open way which was hung on either 
side by great doors curiously sculptured. Pro- 
ceeding within, I observed that the walls, 
which rose to an immense height and receded 
among pillared distances, were peculiarly 
varied, both in substance and in beauty. Some 
appeared to be composed of purest crystal; 
some again of polished jasper ; still others of 
gold and silver. But the material of one was 
common clay, having the color of death. 

On these walls, as I slowly passed along, 
mysterious pictures came and vanished, like 
drifting shadows, or evanescent, inconstant 
light. The pictures partly resembled familiar 
objects, yet were they also strangely foreign. 
While I pondered, therefore, what these things 
might be, an ancient personage suddenly 
stood before me, whose coming was like the 
gray shining of moonlight among trees when 



The Boy. 



11 



the night winds play with thin, white clouds. 
The seer's dignity was, altogether, benevolent. 
His robes — a priest's, perhaps — had the hue of 
dead grass ; his face, the features of which were 
strong and regular, was of nearly the same 
pallor; and in his eyes, wondrously gentle and 
holy, seemed to lie fathomless depths. I said 
no word, but the question of my gaze he an- 
swered : 

" Thou canst not yet understand what thou 
seest. This is for those only whose inner light 
is like that around thee. Wait thou patiently, 
live as the pure, let thy mind be always open 
to the truth, and guard sacredly the well-spring 
of love within thee ; so shalt thou in due time 
perceive the meaning of thy vision.'' 

Then the Temple and the priest slowly 
vanished. But the memory of the dream — 
that is like the sun and the stars, which no man 
may forget. 



12 



A Boy and The Christ. 



II. ' : ; 
The Boy. 

THERE came into the world, in a house by the 
side of the sea, a Boy. This house was a 
small, one-story structure set on the slope of 
a little hill. The years had browned and 
mossed it, and what color of paint it may once 
have boasted had now disappeared. In the 
front wall a door and windows of small glass 
looked out to a bay and the open sea beyond. 
The roof of the building joined at the rear other 
lesser roofs, and these led to curious outhouses 
and sheds, and at last to a barn. From the 
corner of the barn lichen-covered stone walls 
extended at right angles, and they seemed to 
stretch mighty arms around an orchard, now 
in the white beauty of full blossom, as if in 
protection. The front door of the house 
opened out to a path which wound uncertainly 
down to the shore of the bay. And just before 
it, on both sides of the path, rose great elms, 
which the Boy loved. 

On sunny days it was the Boy's habit to lie 
in the shade of these trees, gazing out toward 
the sea. Nothing, of land or water, escaped 
his eyes, although he made no sign. He saw 
the yellow sunlight, sifted down from cloudless 



The Boy. 



13 



skies ; the rocks, to others only dull in hue, but 
to him softly colored everywhere ; the changing 
phases of the bay ; the islands, motionless and 
hazy; the gleam of gull's wings; the etched 
black shapes of crows perched on tall pines ; 
the broken shores stretching irregularly toward 
the distant horizon ; and phantom sails moving 
slowly along its line, or dories swinging lazily 
near on wind and tide. 

All this the Boy saw, though he seemed 
to lie as still as the roots of the trees which 
pillowed his head. 

Outwardly he was very much like other New 

England boys who live on sea-coast farms. 

His light hair usually hung disheveled over 

his pale blue eyes ; his face was as brown as a 

nut ; and his features were irregular. But his 

limbs were supple, and, although his clothing 

fitted him ill, he was at once awkward and 

graceful. A very ordinary boy was this. A 

commonplace boy. Yet he possessed one 

characteristic which distinguished him from 

his fellows. He asked numberless questions. 

Indeed, this was a habit with him, and some 

of these questions were childish, but some of 

these questions no man could answer. 
2 



14 



A Boy and The Christ. 



III. 

The Shadow. 
A TIME came, now, when this Boy went to 
school. The schoolhouse was a weathered 
little building situated, perhaps, a mile from 
his home, and it was called a " Knowledge 
Box." 

And in these days he learned evil. He did 
not know it as evil, it is true ; but he came 
to recognize within himself, in his playmates, 
in the air, a something which was very alluring 
to him, yet which ever caused in his heart 
a vague feeling of unhappiness. It was like 
a kind of Shadow hanging over him. For a 
long time he wondered about this, but after 
a while he accepted it as a natural'part of his. 
life. 

There was also in the neighborhood a little 
church which people called u The Meetin* 
House." Every Sunday the Boy, and those 
with whom he lived in that home by the side 
of the sea, attended the services there held. 
The pastor was an old man who had written 
many books for boys, but this Boy understood 
as yet little of what he heard. In truth, it 
was not much he heard or saw on these oc- 
casions, at best, because his mind was with the 



The Shadow. 



15 



sea, or away in the heart of the woods. He 
knew, however, that the minister always read 
from a great Book, parts of which had also been 
read at home, every morning and every evening, 
as far back as his boy-memory could extend. He 
wondered why this was so. 

Then in later days the Mother of the Boy 
began to read to him out of a little book which, 
she said, was made up of stories taken from 
the great Book. This she did, on the after- 
noons of Sundays, for many weeks. 

The Boy was greatly interested in the stories 
of the little book. The pictures, too, attracted 
him even more. There were stories, with 
pictures, of Adam and Eve ; of a man called 
Abram, whose name was changed ; of a boy 
named Isaac, bound to a pile of stones ; of 
Joseph, sold to the Ishmaelites, and rescuing 
his brothers ; of Moses at the burning bush ; 
of strange scenes in the court of Pharaoh. 
While the Children of Israel were asking 
Pharaoh to let them go, the Boy trembled with 
excitement because the two men, Moses and 
Aaron, did such wonderful things, and " the 
Lord God of Israel" seemed so terrible. He 
could not help being sorry for the Egyptians, 
drowned, a whole army of them ; though, to 
be sure, he was glad that the Israelites escaped. 
He thought the great Tent a wonderful affair, 



16 



A Boy and The Christ. 



and once he arranged blankets between the 
elms for a Tabernacle. So the stories went 
on : the taking of Jericho ; the call of Samuel; 
David and Goliath ; the wise king, Solomon, 
and his Temple; the translation of Elijah; 
the mocking children and Elisha ; and then, 
long afterward, the capture of Jerusalem and 
the dreadful Captivity. 

When the Boy and the Mother had finished 
this little book of stories from the history of 
the Children of Israel, they began to read in a 
second book about a mysterious Being called 
Christ. In this book, also, were pictures of 
peoples and scenes done in many colors. And 
these stories and pictures were almost as fas- 
cinating as those of the first book. But not 
quite. They never made just such an im- 
pression upon the Boy's mind as the earlier 
ones, and he never remembered them with just 
such peculiar feelings as clung to the memory 
of these. Yet they held his interest to the 
end. He was filled with a kind of amazement as 
he listened to the narratives of the Shepherds 
and their flocks, the Angels singing in the 
skies, the birth and infancy of Jesus, the visit 
of the Wise Men to the Babe in the manger, 
and the Flight into Egypt. It seemed strange 
to him that, at a later time, Joseph and Mary 
should forget Jesus, and so return to Jerusa- 



The Shadow. 



17 



lem to find Him. He tried to think what the 
young Carpenter's Son would do during all 
those years that passed before He appeared 
among the people. Did He play like other 
boys? Was He obliged to do any kind of 
work? Did He go to school? And if so, did 
He enjoy it ? Or did He love, rather, to wan- 
der in the fields and to hear strange sounds in 
the woods, or to listen to the music of waters 
and winds and birds ? When Christ came to 
the river Jordan and met John the Baptist, 
the latter did not seem like a man at all. He 
was only a kind of figure clothed like a savage. 
The scene of Jesus with the Dove and the 
Voice gave the Boy the thought that wonderful 
things were quite the natural way of the world. 
Few things there w T ere, indeed, which were not 
wonderful, and those that came along as the 
Mother read from week to week — the Tempta- 
tion in the Wilderness ; the turning of the water 
into wine ; making a few loaves of bread and a 
few fishes feed a multitude ; the stories about 
Lazarus and the Good Samaritan and the 
Prodigal Son ; and all the cases of mighty 
healing — kept the Boy in a state of benumbed 
amazement for many weeks. When the Scribes 
and Pharisees plotted against Christ, and when 
the Lad saw Him beaten and insulted, and at 
last hung upon the Cross between two thieves, 



18 



A Boy and The Christ. 



he was wholly overcome by a feeling which was 
partly a human rage, and partly a something 
which neither the Boy nor you nor I can ex- 
plain or name. But the story of the Resur- 
rection and of Christ's Ascension into heaven 
stirred within him a vague thought that his 
emotions had been unnecessary, and he wished 
that he had known the outcome before. He 
was glad, however, for Jesus's sake, and for the 
sake of His followers. 

After that the lives of the disciples did not 
particularly interest him. They had a hard 
time of it, but they went to Heaven in the 
end. 

Now, during all these days, the Shadow 
came over the Boy's heart very often, and he 
lost much of his power of enjoyment. It was 
the season of summer, yet nothing seemed as 
beautiful as when he knew not of those old 
stories. Was this because he had become ac- 
customed to the scenes around his home? 
He came to feel less interest in the shore, the 
woods, the sea, the birds, and the boats. Why 
he should do this he could not tell. He never 
quite asked himself, yet the question seemed 
always about to be asked. One thing, how- 
ever, he knew very well : that he was more 
restless and unhappy than he had ever been 
before. Sometimes, in these days, he would 



The Shadow. 



19 



lie awake nights gazing at the moonlight as it 
streamed through the window of his little 
room, or listening to the splash of the rain 
on the glass, or to the sighing of the winds 
among the trees, or to the murmur and roar 
of the sea on the shore ; and then the sad- 
ness in the Boy's heart was quite pathetic, and 
tears would drop upon his pillow, till, in a 
nameless grief, he would sob, for what he knew 
not. 

At other times he used to wander to the 
shore of the mournful sea, and sit upon some 
bowlder of rock, motionless a long hour, and 
looking straight before him. He never saw 
the gulls, then, nor the seals, nor the sails far 
away. He was merely conscious that he was 
miserable. He asked himself why he should 
be so unhappy ; but for many days he found 
no answer. Once or twice he was on the 
point of speaking to the Mother about this, 
but when he went to her something made the 
telling of it very hard, and the words died in 
his throat, and he said nothing. 

The Mother saw it all, but she, too, said 
nothing. When a soul is ripening it is better 
to leave it with God. 

So the Shadow deepened more and more. 
More and more the sadness of the Boy's heart 
occupied all his thought. And at last it found 



20 



A Boy and The Christ. 



its way to his lips, fashioning there a question 
which went out to every familiar thing in his 
boyish haunts. 

Why was he so unhappy ? Could not the 
sea tell? Could not the sky? Could not the 
woods ? And could not the stories in the lit- 
tle books answer? He remembered some- 
thing in the second book which seemed to 
hold his attention. The Christ had spoken 
about peace. Jesus had gone about doing 
good. He had made people happy. The 
Mother was always happy. She seemed to 
love the great Book dearly, and to love that 
strange Person in the stories. Then some- 
thing of her prayers floated into his mind. 
Perhaps Jesus could tell. So the Boy groped 
his way. 

But this could not long continue. One 
day, therefore, as he sat by the sea, a new in- 
fluence crept out of the sunlight. He could 
not understand it, nor whence it came; but he 
was very sure it said, " Peace! " And gradu- 
ally the winds began to sing, " Peace ! " And 
the waves whispered, " Peace ! ' ' And " Peace P 
" Peace ! " was written everywhere in the yel- 
low light as it lay on land and water. 

The Boy sobbed, and between his tears a 
prayer broke forth. Thus he learned to pray, 
and the soul of him ripened to its first experi- 



The Shadow* 



21 



ence. And while this swift enlargement was 
coming on the Shadow suddenly lifted, and 
his heart leaped, and a great change came 
over the whole world. Never was sunlight so 
yellow, never grass so green, never skies so 
blue, never old ocean so smiling. He sprang 
to his feet and ran to the house, and went 
straight to the Mother. But when he would 
speak, again the words died in his throat. Yet 
his eyes were eloquent, so that the Mother, 
looking into them, saw that God had been well 
left with the child. She stooped and kissed 
him, and said : 

"Yes, Boy; I know. I am very glad." 

Thus the Boy began to understand the 
pictures on the walls of the Temple, for one 
had found a place in his heart, and it became 
thenceforth a part of his life. But he did not 
know that he understood. The Vision of the 
Temple had not as yet appeared to him. 



22 A Boy and The Christ. 



IV. 
Questions. 

VERY soon, now, he learned the difference 
between work and play. He had already 
known violent effort in the way of amusement, 
and was by this time grown sturdy and active. 
But in these days he was compelled to make 
continuous effort for a purpose that was not 
his own pleasure. Tasks were appointed 
which he was required to perform in certain 
ways and within certain periods. These things 
the Boy did not enjoy. It is true they were 
at first pleasing because of their novelty, but 
the novelty soon wore away, and he began to 
discover the irksomeness of labor. He set 
himself, therefore, to devise means of escaping 
from his tasks, manifesting in this endeavor 
great ingenuity and persistence. As a conse- 
quence he became more and more absorbed in 
pleasure. His thoughts were centered, the 
most of the time, upon himself. In other days 
he had scarcely been conscious of self. He 
had been like a bird, going here and there at 
his will, or like a piece of wood on the waves, 
drifting with every impulse. But of late self 
and the pleasures of self controlled him and 
determined his movements at every oppor- 



Questions. 



23 



tunity. Of all this, however, he was entirely 
ignorant. 

During the time of which I am speaking, 
strange to say, the old Shadow had been com- 
ing back. Indeed, it was not long before it 
became his daily companion. Nevertheless, 
it had gradually lost its power to make him 
unhappy, and he was not conscious of its 
presence. The happiness of that day by the 
sea, when the world had spoken peace to him, 
had surely gone from his heart. But the 
Shadow had come so evenly to abide with him 
tha the did not notice it at anyone time. He 
had grown accustomed to it and to the loss 
of boyish joy. The Shadow and himself "were 
always together. He enjoyed his play after a 
fashion, and he always sought his own gratifi- 
cation ; yet the Shadow would not leave him. 

This led to some curious things. Hitherto 
he had remembered the stories in the little 
books quite vividly. But as the months 
slipped away these stories became very indis- 
tinct. The pictures of the Christ, too, seemed 
less beautiful and quite remote. As one looks 
through a telescope inverted and beholds peo- 
ple and landscapes greatly reduced in size and 
removed to a distance, so the Boy thought of 
the stories about Jesus : they were far away, 
and they seemed small and unimportant. 



24 



A Boy and The Christ. 



Thus the shadow of evil always affects us. 

Yet the Boy, with all who lived in that 
house by the seashore, continued to visit the 
little church. He could understand what the 
minister said more clearly now than in other 
days, but he was perhaps less interested. 

He also, in these days, remained in the 
Sabbath school at the close of the sermon. 
But his spirit had changed. The old habit of 
asking questions was now directed toward the 
pastor's words and the lesson of the hour. 
He had once asked questions because he could 
not understand matters. He now asked them, 
partly because he did not understand, but 
partly because it afforded him a kind of pleas- 
ure to perplex his teachers. Nevertheless, he 
was truly perplexed himself. He was told 
that Christ was God, and this was true to him 
in the same sense that Paul and Barnabas ap- 
peared to be Mercurius and Jupiter to the 
people of Lystra. How could this be? Was 
not God everywhere ? Did He not make 
everything ? Was He not a Spirit ? And 
what is a spirit? Of all this the Boy could 
make little. 

Moreover, how could God be tempted? If 
Christ was God, how could He be tempted? 
It must have been a kind of make-believe, be- 
cause God knows everything, knows how 



Questions. 



25 



everything is coming out, and He cannot do 
evil. If He could not do evil, He could not 
wish to do evil. For the Boy thought, like 
many others, that nothing is temptation which 
does not involve desire, and that Christ's temp- 
tation was literally to transform stone into 
bread, and to leap bodily from the Temple, and 
to bargain with the devil for riches and power. 

A still greater question related to Christ's 
suffering. It was said that jesus was " ex- 
ceeding sorrowful." How could this be if He 
were God ? Could God suffer ? Was not God 
all-powerful, and holy, and happy ? And if 
Christ really suffered, how could He be God ? 
Or was it something not very real, after all ? 
The Boy rather inclined to think that this 
was the case. Still the thought did not quite 
satisfy him. 

When it came to miracles, he was altogether 
confused. At first it seemed to him that these 
were merely wonderful tricks, though that was 
not just the word he wished to employ. He 
had attended, once, an entertainment given by 
a sleight-of-hand performer who seemed to 
change one thing into another, and to cause 
things to appear where there had been noth- 
ing, and to cause them to disappear before 
your very eyes. Something like this magic 
seemed the miracles of Christ. 



26 



A Boy and The Christ. 



Then, too, if Christ was God, why should so 
much be made of miracles, after all ? God 
could do anything. Of course He could raise 
the dead. But what of it ? God did wonders 
everywhere. To this Boy, with the habit of 
questioning, every existing thing appeared to 
be a kind of miracle. How could an egg be- 
come a bird ? What caused a pollywog to 
change into a frog ? Or a caterpillar to be- 
come a butterfly ? What made the winds 
blow ? How could fishes breathe under water ? 
Why was not the clam all hard or all soft ? 
What changed the bud into a flower, and the 
flower into an apple? What kept his own 
heart beating ? Everyone said that God did 
these things. To change water into wine, or 
to give the blind their sight, or to restore the 
sick, or to feed the multitudes, or to walk on 
water, or to raise the dead — why, all this 
seemed simple enough, if Christ was really the 
Lord God ! 

For all such matters, however, he had some 
thought of his own. But the word " Salva- 
tion," of which he heard a great deal, was 
wholly beyond him. He did, indeed, know 
about happiness— that happiness which he had 
found among the rocks by the side of the sea. 
And he had learned something of the mean- 
ing of forgiveness. At times he had felt him- 



Questions. 



27 



self compelled to confess to the Mother par- 
ticular wrongdoings, and to ask her forgiveness. 
He was familiar enough with the feeling of 
complacency which usually followed these con- 
fessions. You had made a clean breast of the 
thing and had asked and gained pardon ; what 
more could you do ? You were then entitled 
to count the score settled, and to trouble 
yourself no more about it. All this w T as well 
enough. But when he read that Christ stood 
before the people and said, "Come unto 
me;" or cried, "I am the way, the truth," 
" I am the resurrection and the life," "I am 
the bread that cometh down from Heaven ; " 
and that He declared that men must " eat His 
body" and "drink His blood " in order to be 
saved — this Boy could make nothing of it at alL 

Nor did the explanations which he received 
from his teachers help matters, for the symbol- 
ism which they said was in such expressions was 
itself beyond him, and, besides this, they did not 
understand the symbolism very well themselves. 

So the seasons passed away, and the Boy 
asked his questions in vain. Meanwhile the 
Shadow remained, for he had not yet discov- 
ered that self, to his own love, was greater than 
all things else, so that he could see nothing, 
beyond. Indeed, the Boy had not found him- 
self as yet. It was many a long year before 
he did this. 



28 



A Boy and The Christ. 



V. 

The Opening of a Soul. 

So long as the Mother remained in that 
home such a state of ignorance could not al- 
ways continue. Events rapidly occurred now 
which were to him of lifelong value. 

During the winter months of one of these 
later seasons there were held in the little 
church of the neighborhood what were called 
" protracted meetings." These the Boy at- 
tended, because the evenings were long, and 
he would otherwise be left alone. He had 
nothing else to do. At the " meetings," he 
observed that after a time the singing became 
more enthusiastic, and that the attendance also 
increased. The minister, too, seemed more 
eloquent and more interesting. Some of the 
neighbors, now and then, confessed publicly 
their wrongdoings and their unfriendly con- 
duct toward one another. Occasionally a boy 
or girl " went forward," as the act of going to 
the altar and kneeling was termed, and it was 
said that they had begun the Christian life. 
They seemed to be very happy as a result of 
doing so. Indeed, the most of the people who 
went regularly to these services soon began to 
be exceedingly joyful, and at times a little 



The Opening of a Soul. 



29 



noisy, and there was apparent, even to the 
Boy, a marked improvement in all the neigh- 
borhood. 

Now the old, familiar Shadow acquired again 
the almost forgotten power to arouse within 
him a feeling of depression and unrest. First 
a very lonely sense came over his heart. Every- 
one, especially among those of his companions 
who had " experienced religion," seemed sep- 
arated from him. No one shunned him, it is 
true, yet he felt himself removed apart from 
those around him. Then he began to wonder 
vaguely whether or not he was a sinner, as peo- 
ple appeared to think he was. What was it to 
be a sinner ? Thus his mind continued in a 
rather dazed state through several evenings. 

On one of those occasions when the minister 
had been more than usually earnest in his re- 
marks, and while some of the people were 
singing, and others were moving about and 
whispering to friends here and there, a new 
thing occurred. A darkness, which was like 
the darkness of a midnight in storm, swept 
suddenly down upon the Boy's heart. It was 
so sudden that it caused him a momentary 
feeling of surprise. It was so dreary, that he 
felt more misery than he had ever known be- 
fore. Nor did he understand it at all. He 

only knew that with this deep feeling of un- 
3 



30 



A Boy and The Christ. 



happiness there came a sense of personal guilt, 
of badness, that was wholly new to him. It 
was not that he remembered wrong things 
which he had done in the past. It was this, 
but it was more than this — a feeling that he 
himself was wrong. Nothing in him seemed 
good. Never had such an experience been 
his. He began to cry, for the very strange- 
ness and misery of it. He trembled violently, 
and thought that he must go on sobbing forever. 

His agitation continued for many minutes, 
while the noise and the singing grew louder. 
After a little, however, a kindly hand was laid 
upon his shoulder just as he was on the point 
of rushing away, out "into the night, and home. 
Yielding to a quick impulse, he permitted him- 
self to be conducted to the front seats, where 
he had earlier observed some of his compan- 
ions. He did this because others had done so. 
For no other reason he knelt. And now the 
grief of his sense of guilt swept over him 
afresh. It was like a great wave, submerging 
him, so that, as he was left alone for some 
time, he was wholly unconscious of the confu- 
sion around him. Again he wished to leap to 
his feet and escape, but a gentle voice whis- 
pered : " Pray, Boy ; ask the Lord to forgive 
you. Say to Him, ' Here, Lord ; I give my- 
self to Thee — 'tis all that I can do/ " 



The Opening of a Soul. 



31 



He tried to obey, but at first he only trem- 
bled. Finally, he groped his way through the 
prayer, and, remembering that gracious hour 
of peace by the side of the sea, he asked that 
his sense of guilt and the crushing burden of 
it, might be taken away. All this he did with 
little real understanding, and, for the most 
part, because he supposed others had done the 
same. But here was a path that had long 
been tried and proved, and suddenly, after a 
time, the Shadow lifted and vanished, the 
sense of badness fled out of his heart, and a 
feeling of peace took its place. It was like the 
old feeling that had come to him in other days, 
but it was brighter, and it seemed to be deeper. 

As he rose to his feet, which he did almost 
immediately, he was greatly abashed. Never- 
theless, in his eyes shone a light which had 
not been there before. The people noticed this, 
and there was some commotion among them, 
expressive of their satisfaction. But it was the 
Mother, surely, who first recognized that light, 
and at the close of the meeting she said — and 
this was all — "Yes, Boy; I understand." 

The smile she gave him never faded from 
his memory. 

When his people went back to the house by 
the side of the sea, the Boy had begun to un- 
derstand another of the pictures on the walls of 



32 



A Boy and The Christ. 



the Temple, for this also had entered his 
heart and was become a part of his life and his 
thought. 



Yet ever is it true, 

" A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 

The questions of this Boy's mind were 
soothed into quiescence ; some of them were 
answered, but his thoughts were still " long 
thoughts/' And so they ever remained. 



Interlude. 



33 



VI. 
Interlude. 

It is best, although it is very pathetic, that 
a boy should not dwell always in the boy-lands 
of life. The mystery of the skies deepens, the 
littleness of the dooryard gives way to the 
vague vastness of earth, and the spirit stirs to 
go out over the horizon afar and to put all tes- 
timonies to the proof. 

Once then the Boy and his father went for a 
day to a great city. They found themselves 
on the wharves, among the vessels of the 
world. A rude, picturesque, entrancing scene 
was this. The Boy gazed with panting heart 
upon the mighty ships slowly rocking at their 
moorings. Confusion supreme reigned on 
deck, and shouts and bumping noises issued 
from below. The steamers, especially, were 
enormous — living monsters of the deep. In 
the holds of the great freighters you could 
store all the buildings of that home by the side 
of the sea, together with everything raised on 
that little farm from January to September. 
And more ! They visited a passenger steamer, 
whose magnificence so filled the Boy's mind 
that he fed on the splendid memories of it 
many days thereafter. This steamer could 
carry more people than lived in the Boy's 



34 



A Boy and The Christ. 



entire township. The expense of one voyage 
would make a man rich. It was indeed won- 
derful. He moved about in a trance. The 
sailors of many nations ; the stevedores, strong 




and rough in appearance, yet good-natured 
withal; an occasional foreigner, clothed like 
the figures in some pictures he had seen ; the 



Interlude. 



35 



huge piles of merchandise — in bottles, baskets, 
bundles, boxes, bales ; men rushing about ; 
horses pawing the uneven planks of the 
wharves ; chains rattling, steam hissing, and 
the deep roar of the city behind — all this made 
an impression upon his mind that filled days 
and nights thereafter with dreams and longings 
which, alas ! never could, perhaps, be realized. 

But, mark you ! What a boy dreams often 
determines his life. At the first his dream is 
always only a dream — an impossible dream. 
And well, mayhap, and mayhap ill, if his 
dreams some day set in firm, fierce resolve. 

This Boy had often read of strange lands 
and peoples beyond the seas. Lying in the 
shade of the elms at home, or loitering about 
the wharves of a neighboring fishing station, 
he had many times watched the sails creeping 
along the edge of the sky and disappearing 
below the horizon, or had followed the trailing 
smoke of an outward-bound steamer into the 
blue distance, it had occasionally come to his 
thought that he might sometime himself sail 
away to sea. 

On the day of this visit to the great city 
that thought became a wish. This should be 
his life. He would be a sailor — a captain ; 
perhaps a master. It was only a dim desire — 
a vague impulse in the background of all the 



36 



A Boy and The Christ. 



emotions he felt amid the noisy confusion of 
the wharves. Yet, while he treasured the 
thought in his heart, he said nothing at the 
time, for it probably could never come true. 

But the years passed, alas! And why alas? 
When the Boy had attained his majority, he 
might do as he would with his life. The wish 
had now become resolution. He kissed the 
Mother — and in that moment was, for her, all 
the love and yearning which had been breathed 
upon him in the reading of the little books,, 
and in the recognition of his heart when he had 
come to her from that peace-giving experience 
by the side of the sea, and when that memorable 
u meeting" in the little church had taught him 
his second lesson in the things of God. He v 
kissed the Mother, and said " good-bye " to all 
in the house where he had been born, and went 
away to sail the seas. 



The Man. 



37 



VII. 
The Man. 

FROM this time, almost to the day of his 
death, sailing the seas was the work of his life. 
In due season he rose from " before the mast ; ,T 
and he became captain, and then master of a 
vessel. And now the keel of his ships plowed 
the billows of all waters. The sails of his ships 
were swept by the winds of every sky. The 
holds of his ships carried cargoes from every 
land bordering the salty deeps. 

Gradually, thus, the memory of the Boy r 
now become a man, stored itself with the 
habits and customs, and something of the 
language, of every people living in the strange 
lands that he visited. 

How mightily life condenses as the years ac- 
cumulate ! The heart of the Man was now very 
lonely. For, while he had gained a home for 
himself where a wife and children waited and 
hungered to behold his face, it was only at long 
intervals that he was permitted to return 
to them, and he companioned with none of 
those with whom he sailed. Now, too, the 
Mother of that home by the side of the sea 
had gone away into the Other World of which 
she had so often spoken. So the Man, sailing 



33 



A Boy and The Christ. 



the seas, was almost alone. But the active 
mind of the Boy had made a great reader, and 
he conned many books of the life and thought 
of many peoples diligently, and he read some, 
not altogether of the fairest, upon religious 
subjects. 

He was also a very busy man. As a common 
sailor at the command of his superior officers, 
and as captain and master, he had always been 
absorbed in the ship and its cargoes and in the 
interests of his employers. In those days 
some wonderful voyages were made, and often- 
times considerable fortunes depended upon the 
fidelity and skill of the navigators and the 
speed of vessels. Thus, more and more, the 
Man became engrossed in material things, de- 
tails of voyages, markets, profits to others, and 
the accumulation of wealth in his own right. 

At the same time the old Shadow settled 
steadily down upon his life. This is the way 
of the Shadow when the inner life is neglected 
for the glitter of gold, or even for the dull color 
of bread. High prices for high values is the 
law, as truly in morals as in trade, in Africa as 
surely as in the land of the shining Cross. 

The Man, however, did not recognize the 
Shadow. He had long since ceased to give 
this matter any thought, and had seemingly 
forgotten the two religious experiences of his 



The Man. 



39 



life. They did not often recur to him, and 
they did not trouble him at all, nor did the 
Shadow. At no time was he a melancholy 
man. Nothing very wrong had he ever com- 
mitted, as he thought, and nothing, at all 
events, very good. Like other men among 
whom he moved, he lived his life complacent- 
ly, quite uniformly content with himself and 
the world. 

The habit of questioning, which had so per- 
plexed his teachers during his boyhood, re- 
mained with him. But his questions were now 
those of the Man, deeper in intensity, wider 
in scope. They concerned many things, but 
chiefly the truths of the religion to which the 
Mother had clung, and which, it was claimed, 
had made the best civilization of the world. 

Perhaps this is a strange thing. Such ques- 
tions men are always asking. During nearly 
twenty centuries they have been doing so. Is 
not this a significant fact ? If Christianity be 
not what it claims to be, is it not full time that 
the truth should have been discovered ? Why 
do not men settle forever this hoary old false- 
hood, and begin to ask questions concerning 
other things which are said to be religious and 
to be true? 

It is significant that the Man again gradually 
drifted into confusion of mind, as the result, 



40 



A Boy and The Christ. 



partly of bad and of half-finished processes of 
reasoning, and worse, of very finished, though 
unconscious, assumptions. The Man was not 
a great genius nor a great scholar. He did 
not know enough to enable him safely to 
rely upon intellectual methods. Nor does 
anyone. Every soul may arrive at religious 
truth by employing religious methods. All 
the truly religious knowledge of the world has 
been acquired primarily in this way. Intellec- 
tual efforts merely analyze and arrange mate- 
rial which is given by inner processes. Only 
one or two minds in an age are great enough 
and sufficiently trained to set themselves in 
intellectual opposition to the deep things of 
Christ's person and words. And even these 
men know too much. " Except ye become as 
little children ! " 

The old confusion, therefore, had come back 
to the Man. It was not the confusion of the 
Boy — of that youthful time when everything 
in Nature seemed reversed and out of order. 
It was, rather, the confusion of misconcep- 
tions, and of half-truths and errors, laboriously 
wrought into a system. For the Man had 
gotten a system of thought. It was not a liv- 
ing system. It was a thing that he had made. 
It had not grown at all. 

Now, of all deadly things to man, perhaps 



The Man. 



41 



the deadliest is a system of thought devoid of 
spiritual life. 

He believed his system to be very fine and 
very complete. While sailing the seas, engaged 
with his ship and its navigation, and reading 
the Great Book infrequently, if at all, he had 
thoroughly settled, as he supposed, yet with- 
out moral receptivity to spiritual truth or con- 
formity to spiritual conditions, problems that 
have created the profoundest and loftiest hu- 
man characters, and have given rise to the 
hugest movements of civilization. But these 
problems were entirely of a spiritual nature. So 
might a being who has never known material 
organisms settle, out of hand, the existence and 
the philosophy of atoms, bodies, and worlds. Or 
so might a theorist, ignoring the methods and 
instruments of scientific investigation, insist 
that men of science are mistaken in their 
opinions. 



42 



A Boy and The Christ. 



VIII. 

A System of Thought. 
THESE were some of the things that made 
up the Man's system of thought: He asked, 
What relation had Jewish history to the re- 
demption of the world ? He observed that it 
occupied a small space in universal history. 
It was only a narrow swath, as it were, cut 
through the annals of the race. In his younger 
manhood it had appeared to him that Jehovah 
had regarded the Israelites with peculiar favor. 
They had been the channels of divine revela- 
tion. Through them a kind of " scheme " had 
been worked out for the peopling of heaven. 
That " scheme " had its historic culmination 
in the Christ, and its continuation in Chris- 
tianity. But, meanwdiile, what had be- 
come of the multitudes who had existed before 
Christ and beyond Judea? What had become 
of those vast hordes who had never known the 
religion of Moses or of Jesus? Did not Je- 
hovah, the Man asked, have regard for all these 
as well as for a handful of Jews? And what 
of the Jews, too, prior to the Christ's advent? 
If faith in Christ is essential to spiritual well- 
being, does not Jewish and Christian history 
seem altogether too narrow, in view of the 



A System of Thought. 43 



countless multitudes who have never heard the 
name of Christ ? Does not the " scheme " 
seem altogether too mechanical for a divine 
method? He could not be satisfied with an 
explanation that supposed a God who is good 
enough to " save " men because they were 
obedient to Jewish laws, by a kind of anticipa- 
tion; or to " save," by an arbitrary act of power 
or mercy, men who knew nothing of Abraham 
or Christ — to " save" them " for Christ's sake" 
— merely for the sake of a Person born at Bethle- 
hem and crucified on Calvary — but who was not 
good enough to " save " such as himself. A 
"scheme" which centered the everlasting wel- 
fare of a whole world in a historic Person 
evolved from a single race — a race which was 
in many respects inferior to others — and in 
the death of that Person, so mysterious that 
no one could fathom it, and constituting a 
kind of atonement, the chief article of which 
seemed to be a definition of the unknowable 
— this did not appear to the Man. to be God- 
like at all. He regarded these matters as 
wholly incongruous with the nature of things. 

Nevertheless, he had himself worked out a 
crude philosophy of religion. Any thoughtful 
person might observe, here and there, indica- 
tions of a vast forward movement takingplace in 
the world ; an eternal drift, embracing all races, 



44 



A Boy and The Christ. 



and sweeping through all ages, toward some 
u far-off divine event." He had read in a book 
of essays a phrase which had made a deep im- 
pression upon his mind, and which, ever after, 
had clung to his thought: "A Power, not our- 
selves, that makes for righteousness." To this 
phrase the Man had pinned his faith. All re- 
ligious systems were more or less true, be- 
cause they were the results of that Power's 
efforts. All were also more or less false, be- 
cause they were the results of human ignorance 
and weakness, and of the ever-present tempta- 
tion of human nature to assert personal and 
moral independence. But the great Power 
must ultimately win.. The Christian religion 
is one only among many religions. It is, how- 
ever, probably the best, taken in its broad out- 
lines as interpreted by rational thought (that 
is, his own), and is to-day, in a very general 
way, being utilized by the universal forward 
movement of history. The Man, therefore, 
concluded that it would be sufficient if he 
lived an honorable, upright life — himself to 
define such, or as defined by the masses of civ- 
ilized moral people. He resolved that when 
his hour of death should come, he would die 
like a man, and would accept without com- 
plaint what might be his due at the bar of ab- 
solute justice. He had never performed any 



A System of Thought. 45 



very good action, it was true ; he could not 
claim to be better than his fellows ; but neither 
had he committed any very great wrong. 

Now here is a noticeable truth : 

Men who best exalt the name of Christ in 
their character and conduct, as confessed by 
contemporaries, judge themselves by the 
good which they have been enabled, as they 
claim, through Christ, to perform. Though 
they do no great wrong, if they succeed not in 
accomplishing positive good, they find them- 
selves under a sense of condemnation. Mod- 
ern Christian ethics insist that men may not 
judge as to their own character merely with 
reference to wrongs omitted. 

His Mother's light had only briefly shone 
in the Man's own eyes. He had asked many 
questions concerning the Christ, and to him- 
self these questions had been satisfactorily an- 
swered. He saw in Jesus a remarkable Per- 
sonage, to whose history had gradually been 
added many imaginative and poetical embel- 
lishments. Just how these so-called embel- 
lishments came to harmonize so perfectly with 
the character and professed mission of Christ, 
as the records manifestly show, involved detail 
questions of which he either had never thought, 
or which he had passed by with unconscious 
assumptions. That Person was from the first 
4 



46 



A Boy and The Christ. 



a dreamer. He possessed a simple, yet a pro- 
foundly contemplative nature. With Him 
psychic powers were highly developed. He 
was a mystic. Israel was His beloved nation. 
He knew its history, its aspirations, its beliefs. 
Fond of solitude, He often brooded over the 
mysterious monitions of His own heart and 
the remarkable career of His people. But He 
saw them abjectly dependent upon Rome, and 
He beheld the burden of corruption, tradi- 
tion, and legalism under which they groaned. 
Visions of purity arose in His mind. Visions 
of reform flitted before His sensitive imagina- 
tion. His thoughts and emotions began to as- 
sume objective form. By the action of a well- 
known psychic law, He heard voices and saw 
apparitions. He discovered some of the pow- 
ers of the human soul, which had hitherto in 
others been surrendered, for the most part, to 
sorcery, necromancy, and various other super- 
stitions. Becoming conscious of such powers 
in Himself, He slowly acquired over them in- 
telligent control. Moved by a natural im- 
pulse, He began to display them, at first spar- 
ingly and with noticeable caution, but later 
confidently and in great numbers. Lofty 
thoughts filled His heart and poured forth 
from His lips. He believed Himself to be 
a prophet, then a kind of priest, and then — 



A System of Thought. 47 



if only men would obey such impulses as His — 
a Saviour. 

It was egoism of this noblest order which 
led Him to call the world to Himself. "Come 
unto Me, and imitate and partake of My spirit, 
and you shall find moral rest. If I, thus en- 
sampling righteousness and faith in My Fa- 
ther, who is the All-Father, be lifted up in 
death, I will by that act draw all men to a 
similar devotement." 

Strange to say, no other mortal had walked 
the same path among the sons of men. 
Strange, too, that this Man was permitted, by 
the " Power not ourselves that makes for 
righteousness," to become so deceived, so to 
deceive others, and to be constituted the head 
of only one more religion of mixed error and 
truth, not as yet supplanted in the' "eternal 
drift " by a true religion. And strange again 
that nothing in the Christ's life appeared to 
possess rude power enough to disillusion His 
heart and bring His imagination to sober 
grounds of reality; not even His agonies in 
the Garden and on the Hill exercised so salu- 
tary an influence upon Him, but rather they 
confirmed Him in His lofty vagaries. Yet His 
mind was capable of creating or of discovering 
the profoundest religious truth, and as well of 
applying the most practical precepts. He 



48 



A Boy and The Christ. 



was not insane. He was marvelously well- 
balanced. Nevertheless, He carried His self- 
begotten ideals to the death. He went on 
always fearless, always dreaming, always hear- 
ing voices, always seeing visions, always utter- 
ing words of the most startling wisdom. At 
the last He manufactured consolation in the 
Garden by the same imagination which caused 
His grief and which had brought Him hith- 
erto. He asked H\s imagination that the Cup 
might pass, yet He bowed to the will of this 
same remarkable function of disease. In its 
abnormal exercise He cried aloud to the Infi- 
nite, feeling that the Infinite had forsaken 
Him, and at the same time, by a violent wrench 
of psychic laws, He surrendered Himself into 
the keeping of the departed Presence. 

Such were some of the incongruities of the 
Man's theories. But he did not observe 
them, for he had a system of thought. 

He perceived the growing hostility of the 
Jewish leaders, and saw that the end — the 
Dreamer's death — was inevitable. But he 
regarded that death, though violent, as a 
natural sequence. Its influence is, in reality, 
the force of the Christ's life. The Atonement 
was the power of that life, consecrated to the 
death, to induce faith in its principles. It 
was not a supernatural factor. 



A System of Thought. 49 



The Man, as he supposed, clearly perceived 
the bond which had specialized some of the 
Christ's following. The disciples became the 
friends of Jesus because they possessed similar 
natures. They were prepared plates upon 
which the superior soul of the Nazarene easily, 
but without plan, photographed His thought. 
These men were simply receptive to His spirit 
and ideals. Thus they learned to love Him 
with a unique and beautiful passion of self- 
abandonment. When the last Tragedy had 
been enacted, that abiding love it was which 
filled them with despair, and at the same time 
contradicted itself, giving us a most remark- 
able psychic phenomenon, by filling them with 
a tearful longing, which was overmastering in 
its imperious power, to behold their Lord 
again. This longing cooperated with their 
own mystic natures, and gradually their habit 
of lucidity, which had indicated their kinship 
with Him, began to give objective form to 
imaginative wondering and passionate desire, 
until they caught glimpses of the great One, 
heard His voice, convinced one another, and 
by a spontaneous movement visualized Him 
rising into the heavens, and commissioning 
them to proclaim His ideals and carry on His 
reforms in the world. Later they wrote, or 
superintended the writing of, His " Lives," and 



50 



A Boy and The Christ. 



to these biographies, in time and by natural 
accretion, were added many details and super- 
natural incidents which cannot now be sepa- 
rated from the plain life of the Carpenter. 
The evolution of Christianity from this source 
was followed by processes entirely at home in 
human nature. 

Thus the Man disposed of the Christ. 
Other questions were settled in a similar man- 
ner. He accepted, in a vague way, the great 
outlines of Christian theology; but in theology 
as organized and defined by the Church he 
took little interest. His acquaintance, indeed, 
with its literature was very slight. Its creeds 
and systems seemed to him very much like 
the works of the old masters in art : they were 
good examples of human genius, but to his 
thought they had little of reality, little of nat- 
uralness, little of life. 

Curiously enough (yet it is not uncommon), 
it did not occur to him to ask by what known 
laws of life or thought such a history as that 
of the Christ could come at the first to be 
founded only upon ordinary human nature. 
Remarkable, it would seem to have been, that 
nothing could dissipate the mystical haze 
which beclouded the disciples' minds — neither 
the hate of the Jews, the contempt of the 
Gentiles, the persecutions of the Roman em- 



A System of Thought. 51 

pire, nor inevitable martyrdom. Remarkable, 
indeed, that any definite expectation of an ap- 
pearance of Jesus could be born of the despair 
that followed the Crucifixion. Where was the 
material for this unique psychic exhibition ? 
Remarkable that His disciples could insist 
upon their own doubts in order to show how 
easily doubts might be dissipated. Remark- 
able that another man — a cold, critical, legal 
Pharisee — could be duped, not by their im- 
aginative romancing, but by a vision of the 
same Christ, for which vision he died, a lone- 
ly martyr, in the heart of Paganism. The 
one vision was wrought out of mystic hab- 
its of thought and feeling and a despairing 
desire to gaze once more upon the beloved 
Form. Whence came Paul's vision ? What 
were the elements of this entirely opposite 
hallucination ? Remarkable that the Christ's 
character should continue identically the 
same through all the handlings of trickster 
imagination subsequent to the death on Cal- 
vary. The Christ of the Resurrection is the 
Christ of Galilee and Gethsemane. And the 
Christ of the Ascension is the same Christ 
who was claimed to have been seen by 
Paul. 

Remarkable that the biographers have re- 
corded their own stupidity and the Christ's 



52 



A Boy and The Christ. 



sorrowful reproofs, their own want of spiritual 
receptivity and the Christ's patience, their 
own misunderstandings as to His mission, 
never wholly undeceived until Pentecost, their 
own slowness to believe in His resurrection, 
and His strenuous efforts to unite them in 
faith therein. Remarkable that those deep 
truths upon which men rely for the construc- 
tion of a substitute system of thought or 
religion either fell from the Christ's lips or 
were created by a set of dreamers — dream- 
ers who, the authors of the soberest and 
grandest truth, were yet unable to distin- 
guish between objective reality and subjec- 
tive hallucination. But most of all, remark- 
able that this " Power not ourselves that 
makes for righteousness," having developed 
out of chaos and matter stellar worlds and 
self-conscious mind, has not thus far been 
able to produce a better religion, nor a better 
origin of religion, than are supposed by such 
a mass of assumptions and unsolved problems 
as were involved in the Man's laborious sys- 
tem of thought. 

Nevertheless his system w r as his own, and 
therefore of peculiar value. And so he sailed 
many seas with that system of thought, and 
still he sailed the seas with his system of 
thought. 



A System of Thought. 53 



The pictures of the Temple remained yet 
upon its walls. The Man had never, since the 
day of his home-leaving, conformed to the 
conditions of their transfer to his heart. 



54 



A Boy and The Christ. 



IX. 

The Transition. 

Two events now occurred which exerted a 
great influence upon all the Man's life there- 
after. Many things, apparently trivial, illus- 
trate oftentimes the poverty of theories which 
are merely personal. Argumentation fails ; 
but life touches the hidden centers of convic- 
tion, and lo ! the most elaborate systems go 
down like fabrics of ashes before the breath of 
the wind. 

I builded me a City all of gold. And I said, 
" 7 /lis is the utmost. Here will I live, and no 
man shall despoil me." But once a great sorrow 
came to me, and my tears dissolved in a thin 
mist which fell, like a veil, upon my cherished 
work. And the mist destroyed the City, for' the 
acid of the tears was very bitter. But while I 
mused I saw secret forces at labor, and the law 
of them crystallized the chaos of gold particles 
into rarest forms, exceedingly beautiful. So I 
said : 

u This is better ; " and I had great peace, for 
God s doing is beyond the reacli of tears, and it 
cannot go down before wrath. 

Now such was the experience of the Man. 



The Yacht. 



55 



X. 

The Yacht. 

On a fine morning of June the Man's vessel 
lay at anchor in the harbor of a great city. It 
was a perfect day. A warm atmosphere, a 
fair breeze, a cloudless sky, made the world's 
beauty a divinity. The sailor stood on his 
forward deck, a little after sunrise. The harbor, 
with its crowding craft, lying between himself 
and the dividing wharves, spread out in a fore- 
ground of the liveliest interest, the picturesque 
forms of the water-front and the confused piles 
of the city stretching back and away to circling 
hills. Vividest color splashed the scene with 
broadest art. The effluent glory of morning 
seemed prodigal. Light flowed in waves and 
tides on all the rippling waters and the bur- 
dened shores, and flashed from sails and 
painted hulls and funnels, and gleamed and 
glowed and vanished and glanced again from 
glass and marble, stone and brick, and gilded 
domes and slated spires of the city beyond. 

No skill could reproduce this scene, for it 
lived, and Heaven laughs at man's memory. 

A yacht moved slowly out toward the open. 
White her hull, white her sails, white her masts 
and rigging. The sailor observed the grace of 



56 



A Boy and The Christ. 



her lines and the silver of the foam at her 
prow, as she glided, heeled slightly over, like 
a clean thing of life, a few hundred feet distant 
from his own huge freighter. 

It was not, however, this beauty which 
lingered so long in his heart. From the yacht 
a woman's voice arose and floated across the 
waters. It was clear and sweet, and it vibrated 
with power. The tones were like pearls of 
melody strung upon a thread of thought. It 
swelled and fell away and lingered in song. 
And these were the words it sang: 

" Peace beginning to be 

Deep as the sleep of the sea 

When the stars their faces glass 

In its blue tranquillity. 

Hearts of men upon earth, 

Never once still from their birth, 

To rest, as the wild waters rest, 

With the colors of Heaven on their breast. 

" Love, which is sunlight of peace, 
Age by age to increase, 
Till anger and hatred are dead, 
And sorrow and death shall cease. 
' On earth peace, and good will,' 
Souls that are gentle and still 
Hear the first music of this 
Far-off, infinite bliss." 

The boat rapidly widened the distance be- 
tween herself and the freighter. The song 



The Yacht. 



57 



faded. Then there entered the mind of the 
Man, scarcely perceived by himself, a feeling 
of disturbance, a faint shadow and suspicion, 
which seemed to have some reference to his 
cherished system of thought. 

" Peace beginning to be 
Deep as the sleep of the sea." 

Had such a peace been his own since that 
day, the Boy's day, yonder by the side of the 
sea? A slightly perceptible sense of cheap- 
ness and poverty hovered a moment around 
his long-settled convictions. 

" Souls that are gentle and still 
Hear the first music of this 
Far-off, infinite bliss." 

Impatiently he turned and went below. 
Nevertheless, he sailed and sailed with his 
system of thought. 



58 



A Boy and The Christ. 



XL 

The Black Woman's Testimony. 

Truth seldom meets us twice on the same 
highway. She delights in contrasts. Man off 
guard is her opportunity. The law of convic- 
tion is the law of contraries. 

The second event was this. The Sailor's 
ship got out of her course in a storm, and, 
striking upon a reef, went down. Her crew 
and captain came safely off, but the Man was 
badly bruised, and for several days he remained 
in a semiconscious state. When he awakened 
he found himself, after the first confusion and 
the blurred recollection of the wreck had 
passed, in what appeared to be a rude hut. 
It was situated near the shore, for he could 
hear the murmur of the waves. The dingy 
ceiling of the room where he lay, the cracked 
walls devoid of any adornment, and the few 
articles of homely and w r ell-worn furniture 
gracing its scant limits, betokened poverty, 
yet the perfect cleanliness of his bed covering 
indicated that it was not the poverty of squalor. 
His perception of these things came with the 
feeling of surprise that he was not on his vessel. 
There had been some mishap ; but this was not 
his cabin. While struggling to make himself 



The Black Woman's Testimony. 59 



out, a door which opened into another room 
moved noisily on its hinges, and, as he turned 
painfully toward it, a Negro woman stood be- 
fore him. She uttered a low cry : " Bless de 
Lord ! " but immediately held up a warning 
finger. 

" Ye mustn't talk, honey." 
The woman was a giantess, and as black as 
night. But a smile played around her lips, and 
in her eyes shone a light that matched the 
smile — a light of serenest peace. The Man 
gazed wonderingly for a moment at this sable 
apparition, and then endeavored to speak, but 
the effort was too much, and he sank into a 
confused sleep. 

When he again awakened, it was afternoon. 
He had faintly dreamed of the yacht and the 
song, but the words he could not make out. 
As he opened his eyes he heard another singer 
in an adjoining room. The voice was wonder- 
fully deep and mellow, yet low and soft. The 
words that the second singer sang were these : 
" Jesus, Lover of my soul, 
Let me to thy bosom fly, 
While the nearer waters roll, 

While the tempest still is high ! 
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, 

Till the storm of life is past ; 
Safe into the haven guide, 
O receive my soul at last ! " 



60 



A Boy and The Christ. 



With the concluding strain the singer en- 
tered the room. It was the Negress. In a 
few words she explained his presence there, 
completing what he vaguely remembered, of 
the storm and wreck. 

" Bless de Lord, sah ! You's safe now. But 
you mustn't worry, honey. Nuthin' to do but 
jes' wait, now. Cyant talk with you no more. 
Jes' wait, dat's all." 

Two days passed, and always the Man heard 
in his dreams the song of the woman in the 
yacht mingled with the song of the black 
woman. 

On the third day, very much recovered, he 
asked— and again it was the questioning Boy : 
" Do you believe in Jesus, auntie ?" 

The Negress stood a moment, staring, as if 
shocked. Then a smile broke over her homely 
face, and her eyes gleamed softly, and then she 
laughed gently, but with all her great body, till 
the laugh rippled and quavered, slightly jarring 
the floor and giving to his bed a little tremble. 

" Does I believe in Jesus, honey ? Shore ! 
Yit it's more knowin' than believin'. Does I 
believe ? — I knows Jesus. Don't you believe 
in de Lord, sah ? " 

The Man did not reply for a moment. He 
was thinking about what he supposed he be- 
lieved. 



62 



A Boy and The Christ. 



" Peace, beginning to be," 



" While the nearer waters roll.'* 

He shook his head. " I don't know. I 
don't know/' 

After this he mended rapidly, and was soon 
able to sit at a window that looked out toward 
the sea, where he divided his attention between 
the destroyer of his ship and the black woman. 
She seemed to be happy ; but the nature of 
her race and her ignorance would explain that. 

All people are accounted ignorant who have 
read only one Book. 

Truth is merely what we know of dirt. 

Scholarship is control of knowledge relating 
to the lower things of human life. 

Yet this woman inspired a strange interest 
in the Man. He fell back into his old habit 
of questioning, partly because time dragged, 
but partly, also, because this ignorant giantess 
said remarkable things. Gradually, then, he 
began to tell the story of his life and to utter 
his perennial problems. Perhaps a deep law 
of our nature was at work, for, now that the 
control of a resolute will was held in abey- 
ance by enforced idleness, he found himself 
dealing more frankly with some incidents 
of his past ; and their significance, hitherto 



The Black Woman's Testimony. 63 



crowded to the background of consciousness, or 
only vaguely apprehended, came slowly to ap- 
peal to his mind with curious force. So he 
told her of those two days which brought to 
him his first religious experience, the one a 
sense of happiness, the other a sense of Tight- 
ness, both of which feelings he regarded as 
purely the psychoses of a boy's nervous system. 
He related the good-bye to home, and the long 
wandering life on the seas. He even alluded 
momentarily to the incident of the yacht, but 
barely suggested the impression which the in- 
cident had left upon his mind. Without any 
desire to do so, and drawn on by the woman's 
unconscious skill (high spiritual natures fre- 
quently display a remarkable instinct for truth 
and reality which is a kind of intuition), he 
gave her his views of the history of Israel, too 
narrow for a world's redemption, of the Christ, 
the biography of a Divine dreamer woven into 
the romance of dreaming centuries, and of the 
" Power that makes for righteousness." 

" Don't you think, auntie, that, if a man tries 
to live about right, he'll stand a pretty good 
chance in the other world ? We can't do very 
much wrong in seventy years ; at least the 
most of us. We are so hedged in, and so 
blinded here, the worst of us, that we can never 
see what we do on all sides. It must be a hard 



64 



A Boy and The Christ. 



God that could damn us under such circum- 
stances. Isn't that so, auntie?" 

" I dun know, child. I dun know. He doan 
damn us. Hit's ourselves. An' we ain't got 
to be blind. He give us de light, an' hit's for 
us to use hit. But look here, honey ! Hit 
ain't a question of doin', seems to me — least- 
wise, not so much. De life, sah ! De life! 
Dat's hit. If a thing ain't got de life, hit'll die, 
shore. Shore, honey! Mebby you's right 'bout 
livin' hon'able an' sich. Mebby you's got de 
life! 'Tain't fur me to say. But if we ain't 
got de life, sah, ain't we dead? Hain't we 
got to die ? " 

" I don't know what you mean, auntie, by 
the life. What is life ? Never mind me, now ; 
I don't pretend to be very good, you know." 

ik Hit am not a matter of pretendin'. Beins 
what counts. Livin's bein'. De life's what 
makes a thing grow, what keeps a thing up. 
You had de life, boy, dere by de sea, an' in de 
meetin' house. Shore! You had de life den. 
Hif you's got dat, you's all right." 

Thus the Man and the woman talked as the 
days passed. 

At another time he asked her if God would 
choose for His own a single race, leaving all 
the rest of the world to its fate. 

" Why, chile, dat's jes' hit. He pick out de 



The Black Woman's Testimony. 65 



chillun of Israel for de sake of de rest. I dun 
know why de Lord chuse de Jews. I dun 
know why Jesus so long comin' ! But he didn't 
neglec' de worl\ De Book says He lef no 
nation without a witness. Hit says, ' God so 
loved de world/ 'Cause He loved de world de 
Israelites were chusen." 

" But why did He not choose others? " the 
Man asked. 

44 Hit's jes' lak a river runnin' through de 
Ian'. De Ian' would be dry an' barren, certain, 
'nless de river run through hit. Does de water 
in de banks have to tech every tree an' field in 
all de lan' to give hit life? Dat's hit, sah. De life 
am dere. All de yearth's watered by de river, 
flowin' only a little stream through de whole." 

" But it seems to me," said the sailor, " that 
that was giving the rest of the world a very poor 
chance. Everything depended on the Jews." 

" Why, now, how's dat ? De Lord was 
everywhere. He didn't forsake no one. Only 
He come powerful to de Jews, so dat de world 
might see de river — lak hit tell in 'Zekiel — an' 
everybody too, kin jes' take de water of life, 
ef he wants to, by de side of de river, an' all 
over de world. Ef he doan' see de river, 
dat's all right. He gits de water, de life, 
by jes' turnin' to de Lord best he kin. Hit 
doan' matter dat he doan' know what de 



66 



A Boy and The Christ. 



river's called, nur what de life is. Ef he wants 
de Lord, an' wants to do de Lord's will, jes' 
as he knows how, dat's 'cepted, doan' you see, 
honey ? Jes' 'cause de Lord am good 'nough 
to pick out de Jews an' prepare fur to sen' de 
Son, He all de time am a-strivin' to git de ears 
an' hearts of all de people. 'Pears to me, boy, 
hit's as plain as de loaf of bread on dat table. 
Ef dere wa'n't no Chillun of Israel, no Abra- 
ham, no Daniel, no prophets, no Jesus, 
'twouldn't be plain at all. You's got it wrong 
end foh, sah." 

At still another time, when the woman had 
gone over substantially the same ground, the 
Man asked her what she thought of the Christ, 
and to her answer, " He's de Lord ; I knows 
Jesus," he had replied: 

" How can you know Him, auntie? He's 
dead." 

" How does I know Jesus, boy? How does 
I know anything? Doan' I know when Ls 
happy an' when I's mis'able ? Doan' I know 
nobody else can make me feel lak Jesus make 
me ? Where I git de thoughts dat come to me 
w T hen I read the Bible? Pears lak I'm two — 
a black woman with jes' de head of other black 
folks, an' den 'nother person altogether, with 
a head dat sees a great light in de Book, an' 
senses, lak, de meanin' of de truth. I cyant 



The Black Woman's Testimony. 67 



tell all I sees. No ; but I knows Jesus, 'cause 
He fills me inside, an' makes a peace dere 
nothin' else kin make, an' holds me up lak 
nothin' else kin do." 

" Then you think He's with you, my good 
woman ? " the Man interposed. " I think that 
is very strange. He's dead." 

" Honey,"she said, in an awed tone, " some- 
times, when Fs tendin' de flowers in my 
gyardin, 'pears lak I see Jesus — lak de woman 
did — in de wind fuzzin my hair, an' I de- 
clare, sah, 'pears lak I smell de precious 
intment pohed on de head of Jesus when 
I puts de roses to my face. O, how does 
I know Jesus! An' hit's Him, shore! No- 
body else make me feel dat way. Never think 
I knows Paul, nor Peter, nor de lovin' John. 
An' I never got to know Him till I do what He 
says — forsake de world an' do His c'mand- 
ments." 

The Man smiled. What did forsaking the 
world mean to this ignorant and pauper 
woman ? 

" An' hit's Him, shore !" she went on with- 
out heeding the smile. " Cyant be no mistake, 
boy, 'bout dat. Nobody ever said he knew Jesus 
'cept he come to Jesus in Jesus's way, an' did 
what Jesus wanted him to do. Dere was a 
man, once, what felt himself a mis'able sinner, 



68 



A Boy and The Christ. 



an' he broke down on his knees, prayin' God 
fur to furgive him an' bring him peace; but he 
wouldn't speak de name of Jesus — wouldn't 
say he b'lieved in Him. Well, he jes' prayed 
an* ag'nized a hull night, an' he never got any 
nearer de gates till he jes' give in — lak he were 
comin- to his senses. An' den de peace hit 
come, 's you've seen de tide, givin' life* 
Mighty strange, 'pears to me, de good Lord 
fool us so, ef we cyant know Jesus." 

And after a pause : " But it's de same Jesus, 
de same feelin', de same strength an' peace. 
Hit always comes in de same way, after de 
same 'bedience. When I backslides an' gits 
careless an sinner-lak, He goes away. Den, 
when I repents an' turns back to de Lord an' 
takes Him at His word, hit's de very same 
peace an' strength lak I had befoh. De very 
same Jesus. O, how does I know Jesus! " 

There was a volume of meaning in this ex- 
clamation, — absolute personal certainty amazed 
at being called in question. 

The Man again asked her concerning Christ ? 
How could He, if human, be God ? He did 
not expect her to answer this question, but 
looked to hear her say that God had come 
down from Heaven and dwelt as a man in Pal- 
estine, or that this was one of those matters 
into which we must not pry too closely. 



The Black Woman's Testimony. 69 



But this child of world-ignorance had also 
pondered the thought, and, with her " spirit of 
discernment, '* had glimpsed something of the 
truth. It had not, of course, reached her rea- 
son, or, if so, it was merely as a kind of shadow. 
Yet it had arrested the attention of her spirit- 
ual intuitions. In countless cases such a proc- 
ess has occurred. 

How can a soul dwell in rich, unseen atmos- 
pheres without catching somewhat of their 
reality and significance? 

To analyze and define are not absolutely es- 
sential to the soul's life. Otherwise faith were 
impossible, for belief would demand omnis- 
cience. 

Systematic theology is an expression of the 
nature of mind, but it is not necessarily a part 
of God's plan. 

" Doan de Gospel of John say Jesus was de 
Word ? De Word was in the beginnin'. An' 
Jesus say, ' Befoh Abraham was, I am.' ' De 
Word was with God, an de Word was God' 
An ' de Word was made flesh.' An de Word 
made de whole world — everything. Hit's all 
dere, honey. What's a word? What's my 
word dis minnit ? Poh 'nough stuff, shore!" 
and she laughed. "Yit jes' the same, hit's 



70 



A Boy and The Christ. 



my word, and it kinder tells what I's thinkin' 
of. Hit's de thought to you, ain't hit ? Shore ! 
De Word of de Lord's de Lord's thought. Dat 
Word's de Lord Hisself, 'cause hit jes' stan' 
true fur what he is. So Jesus was de Lord's 
thought — de very Lord Hisself. Jesus was 
jes' de Lord made into a Word fur de thought 
of de people. De yearth's de Lord's thought. 
Hit seems lak it were jes' right dat de Word 
speakin' de world into bein' should be de 
Word dat's come to tell of de Lord's love. 
Dat's why I see an' hear an' smell de beauty 
of Jesus in my gyardin. O, I does know 
Jesus ! " 

The Man understood more of this little 
homily than the woman herself, so far as her 
mind was involved. Her moral perceptions 
had taken the thought, and her words ex- 
pressed it very well; but she did not really 
know that her language conveyed the truth so 
clearly. 

There is no idolatry in worship rendered to 
such a Christ. It transcends Judea. It illu- 
mines all history. 

When the Man asked her what the Christ's 
death had to do with human salvation, she was 
greatly confused in her effort to express what 
was little more than a fragrance and a light in 
her soul. Christ's blood stood vaguely, in her 



The Black Woman's Testimony. 71 



mind, for the offering up of His life, and this 
showed God's love, which, somehow, must 
suffer and do what it can for its object. 

Long afterward the Man gradually formu- 
lated her evident meaning into a truth which 
ravished his heart and mind. At this time he 
was merely collecting material for subsequent 
elaboration. 

" Dat's de mystery from de beginning boy ; 
an' I cyant tell jes' what I thinks. But. hit 
'pears to me Jesus died jes' to show de worl' 
what He boun' to do fur man's sake, even ef 
dey killed Him fur hit. An' de blood stan' 
for His life. He offered His life fur de hull 
world to take an' live. He's de life of de 
Word — de Lord Hisself. Ef you b'lieves, you 
kin jes' git dat life in yoh heart. Hit's come 
to me, honey ; hit kin come to you, shore ! O, 
how does I know Jesus? Why, boy, Fse got 
de life in my soul ! 

" An' He had to die. Not 'cause de great 
God done make Him, but 'cause He was de 
great God's thought, de Word of life an' love ; 
an' He dun chuse to die. He couldn't do 
nothin' else, nohow. Doan' de mother want 
to die fur de baby? Doan' love suffer lak it 
had de fever when de chile lay sick of de fever? 
Doan' love git hitself— sort a fin' hitself — jes' 
dat way? De Lord pick out de Jews 'cause 



72 



A Boy and The Christ. 



He love de worl', and de Lord come as de 
Word — in Jesus — Hisself come, 'cause He 
loved de worl', an' love jes' make Him go on 
offerin' Hisself, His life — His own love make 
Him — 'twill His enemies killed him. An' 
sence dat de Lord stan' lak on Calvary jes' 
offerin' His life, Hisself, to every man an' 
woman an' chile. When you b'lieves, you jes' 
gives up an' lets de light in. Ef a thing hain't 
got de life, hit'll die, honey, shore. Cyant be 
no other way. You's jes' lak de flower, prap's. 
You's dyin' cause you hain't got de life. 
Flower looks all right. Seems to be doin' all 
right, but de life hain't dere, an' hit die. An' 
you, and nobody, cyant live without de life. 
Jesus am de life, 'cause He say so. He is jes' 
de great God's life offered to you. O, honey, 
you jes' put yoh poh heart close to de Lord's 
heart, an' git de life." 

Thus this black woman, untrained, unedu- 
cated, uttered truths which had escaped all the 
Man's reading and questioning. Hers was 
not a system of thought at all. It was scarcely 
more than a mass of moral intuitions. But it 
possessed spiritual life. It was a growth, not 
a fabric. 

She had no knowledge of books, but she had 
surrendered to the Unseen, and daily, on her 
knees, with one Book open before her, she had 



The Black Woman's Testimony. 73 



read, and she had talked with Reality, until 
the pages had glowed with unquenchable light, 
and the words had blossomed forth and burst 
out in exaltations of meaning, and between the 
lines had formed the sentences of truth. 

Now, truth ever lurks beneath letters and 
forms, to give them their only, their abiding, 
significance. 

So, the Man and the Christ had met, as man 
and the Christ usually meet, in a soul made 
teachable by the Spirit of Truth. 

Now, the time came when these two parted. 
The Man remembered, as he said good-bye to 
his nurse, that old poem of India: 

" Like as a plank of driftwood, 

Tossed on the watery main, 
Another plank encounters, 

Meets, touches, parts again ; 
So, tossed and drifting ever, 

On life's unresting sea, 
We meet and greet and sever, 

Parting eternally." 

But was this parting to be eternal ? 

He wished to reward the woman for her 
kindness, and he insisted. She would not 
have it so. 

" Couldn't think of hit, boy, You's been 
on my heart all dese days, shore 'nough on 
my heart ; an' you's helped me 'spress myself. 



The Black Woman's Testimony. 75 



Never got so clare befoh. 'Pears lak de Lord 
sent you here, sah, to bring me His blessin*. 
Pow'ful many I's had sence you come. Couldn't 
take no money. It's all paid ef you gits de 
life, boy. Look out fur de life, now, won't 
you ? " 

And the Man said he would try to view 
these things from her standpoint, grasped her 
hand, and turned away. 



76 



A Boy and The Christ. 



XII. 
The Last Picture. 

AGAIN the Man sailed the seas. But his 
sailing was never afterward what it had for- 
merly been. The incident of the yacht and 
the simple, yet remarkable utterances of the 
Negro Christian remained in all his thoughts : 
" Peace ; " " Jesus, Lover ; " " De life, honey. " 
And gradually with these were woven the 
early scenes of that far-off day by the side of 
the sea, and that night in the little meeting- 
house. A wanderer he had been, and his 
mind had gathered many pictures ; but those 
which are prominent in this history came in 
time to be prized above all. 

He began to read the one Book frequently; 
and he became a true investigator, judging 
realities by appropriate standards and employ- 
ing methods called for by the nature of the 
truth studied. Eventually, therefore, it came 
to pass, as it always has come to pass under 
required conditions, that the pictures on the 
walls of the Temple, one by one, he could 
scarcely say how or when, entered his heart 
and became parts of his inmost thought and 
life. The more this occurred, too, the more 
his intellect found rational employment, yet 



The Last Picture. 



77 



the more, away and beyond such result, the 
moral intuitions of his nature exerted their 
rightful sway. So the Man understood many 
things at last. 

When he sailed his final voyage, it was not 
as master or as captain. He was now a very 
old man. His home had vanished, as homes 
must. Alas! the pathos, when it makes its 
individual applications, of " the solemn flow 
of the life of our race." The wife had died, 
and his children had found their own home 
places. The years had told upon him. Health 
had failed, and, the bent of his life returning, 
once more he must sail, with only sky and water 
and a ship in sight. 



On summer seas Christmas dawned. All 
day the Man lay upon piles of cushions ar- 
ranged on the forward deck, noting the changing 
moods of ocean. It was his great and trans- 
parent day, the day of the End. As the 
afternoon hours drew on he became weaker, 
and seemed to perceive the approaching Event. 
The captain of the vessel stood by his side, 
now and then answering his scarcely audible 
observations. 

" The sea is His hiding-place, captain," he 
6 



78 



A Boy and The Christ. 



said, slowly and faintly. " Put my body into 
it ; it shall yet give up its dead." 

" That is a great mystery, sir, which I cannot 
understand. " 

" We understand very little, captain. How 
much do we know of this immensity around 
us? I do not think it is so much the mind's 
function to know as to believe. Let it search 
for reasons for belief. If it insists upon know- 
ing, it will come only to despair." 

He paused a long moment, as if thinking, 
while he spoke, of distant scenes. 

" There is only one thing, captain, that I 
know ; but I do not know that in the ordinary 
sense. It is an acquaintance." 

" May I ask what that is ? " 

" I know the Christ, captain." These words 
were pronounced with little pauses between 
them, for the Man was weak, and, as the law 
of our life called for, his real thought was re- 
mote. " An old colored woman taught me — 

" No ; — she said she knew Him, and after 
years of trying to discover truth in reason, 
Almighty God taught me." 

" The great sea. I love it. But it is too 
vast, that other Sea, to know. We can know, 
as men have it, very little ; but we have reason 
to believe a universe." 



The Last Picture. 



79 



The words were scarcely spoken. They 
rather trembled forth, the last with an air of 
deep awe. 

And now the sun sank lower. The waters 
were motionless, save for long, gentle undula- 
tions, reflecting the gorgeous transformations 
of the western heavens. The ship did not 
move. 

" Peace — 



80 



A Boy and The Christ. 



XIII. 

"Deep as the Sleep of the Sea." 

The line seemed to the Man to be whispered 
in the breezeless air. 

For a few moments he appeared to be un- 
conscious of his surroundings, remaining silent 
with eyes closed, and motionless. Then he 
opened them, and, as the colors of the sky 
enriched, as the hues of dun became violet, 
and the reds flamed to scarlet, and the yellow 
turned to gold, and the pale white of remotest 
upper clouds flashed a silver light, and the 
open spaces took on the enameled blue of 
the turquoise, with vast streams of burnished 
bronze floating across them — the whole re- 
peated in the slightly swelling sea, so that the 
upper scene had life below — he whispered : 

" ' To rest, as the wild waters rest, 

With the colors of heaven on their breast.' 

Only with the heart can man know Thee, 
O Lord ! " 

And just as that Christmas sun went down, 
a great whiteness overspread all the splendors 
of the heavens, and the Man saw, as he gazed 
into the tumultuous spaces, an 

" Innumerable multitude of forms 
Scattered through half the circle of the sky," 



"Deep as the Sleep of the Sea." 81 



which were, to him, faint outlines of unseen 
wings, and of faces looking upon him, there in 
mid-ocean, with eyes and smiles of unspeak- 
able welcome. 

The captain, who had conversed with him 
often on that voyage, thought he caught the 
movement of the purple lips, " Souls," and he 
repeated the last lines: 

" Souls that are gentle and still 
Hear the first music of this 
Far-off, infinite bliss." 

So now the sun went out of sight, and the 
Man also had taken his departure. And the 
last picture on the walls of the Temple had 
entered his heart. He understood even the 
mystery of death. 

" Blessed are the dead who die in the 
Lord." 



er 

3*1 



